ANDOR Season 2 premiered on this day 1 year ago

Map of local temperature trends from GISTEMP from 1970-2025. It's warming faster over land than the ocean, more in the North than in the South, and most of all in the Arctic. Red covers the regions that have warmed more than 2ºC - which is basically all NH extratropical land areas. Sorry.

Happy Earth Day!

Kevin Warsh just lost me. He argues he's going to be an independent Fed Chair, but refuses to acknowledge that Trump lost the 2020 election. If you can't state simple facts when you're in the political spotlight, you aren't independent. You're a coward.

It weirds me out when a brand new account without a profile pic or any info follows me immediately after joining. I don’t have a checkmark, so following 5 “official” accounts & then me is so random. Are you a bot? A real person? There has been an uptick in this the last month. Why?!

Reskilling to FUCKING WHAT DAN

National Science Foundation’s future in limbo as Trump eyes cuts The National Science Foundation’s (NSF) future is in limbo as President Trump pushes for more budget cuts and his nominee to helm the research agency awaits Senate confirmation.  Since Trump’s retu…

'The NSF has only committed $500 million of the $8 billion it was appropriated for the fiscal year, which began on Oct. 1. The NSF will lose the billions of remaining funding if it does not spend it by Sept. 30.' thehill.com/homenews/adm...

And I'm delighted I can get from Oxford to Paris by train, and from Paris to Zurich by train. No flights! Getting back from Zurich to London by train is a bit of a bother, though.

Back to books - Sweden's schools cutting back on digital learning Swedish classrooms swap laptops for books, pens and paper, raising concerns from the tech sector.

The sooner the better.
www.bbc.com/news/article...

Trying to explain St Augustine to the pope, the former head of the Augustinian order, who wrote his doctoral thesis on Augustine, on his way back from celebrating mass at the Basilica of St Augustine in Annaba, Algeria, overlooking the site where Augustine lived is peak Adult Catholic Convert.

Of course they are concentration camps. And @anatosaurus.bsky.social is right that once you accept the euphemism you are halfway to normalizing the thing.

ACDC 2026 Institute Pascal The summer school will take place at Institute Pascal, Universite Paris-Saclay, from Monday the 31st of August to Wednesday the 16th of September 2026. The topic is "Past Warm Greenhouse Climates of t...

Learn climate physics in Paris! Apply to the ACDC Summer School on Warm Climates of the Cenozoic. I'm giving the opening lectures on the key role of CO2. www.uib.no/en/rs/acdc/1...

Superpower Suicide The geopolitics of our moment

“Superpower Suicide” is a concept to help understand the approach of the Trump regime to the rest of the world. We are fighting a war for no reason we can name, losing it, and covering our defeat with genocidal and apocalyptic propaganda.
snyder.substack.com/p/superpower...

Measuring the Impact of Data Centers in the United States Economy: Monetary Damage from Air Pollution and Greenhouse Gas Emissions Founded in 1920, the NBER is a private, non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to conducting economic research and to disseminating research findings among academics, public policy makers, an...

US data centers consume 5-8% of US electricity generation (!) and generates $25 billion in external environmental costs

www.nber.org/papers/w35100

What do you get if you cross an angry sheep with a angry cow?

One animal in a baaaaaaaad moooooooood.

Someone asked me if I’d take a deal where I got $50k, but my worst enemy got $100k.

I said, “sounds amazing. I’ve always wanted $150k."

30x15” oil painting of a piece of a nebula that looks like a leviathan skeleton reaching out. It’s brown with an orange glow & a background of lilac fading into pink, orange, then brown

If you found me from tiny space paintings, I wanted to share a not-so-tiny painting! This spire of is 9.5 light years tall. It resides in the Eagle Nebula near the more famous Pillars of Creation. I named this piece Leviathan’s Wake—a fun nod to two of my favorite things, The Expanse + Subnautica 🐉

“From agency chiefs like Marty Makary & Jay Bhattacharya to higher-ups like RFK Jr & Russell Vought, to low-level insiders like Matthew Memoli & Jon Lorsch at NIH, whose familiarity with the workings of their agency helped to bring it down from within, all of these men need to be held accountable”👏

Very serious point here — media vastly overreport what Trump says rather than clarifying for the reader the actual strategic situation.

Thinking Live with Phillips O'Brien on War in Iran and Ukraine A recording from my conversation with Phillips O'Brien

What does the Iran war have to do with sustaining the Russian economy? Lifting sanctions for Russians does nothing for Americans. It just makes it easier for Russia to continue its war in Ukraine. I spoke with @phillipspobrien.bsky.social about Iran and Russia.
snyder.substack.com/p/thinking-l...

3/3. It’s hard for Trump to end a war when Putin is making so much money from it.

2/3. The biggest example of profiteering is of course the person Trump openly adores — Putin, from oil prices and the lifting of sanctions.

Traders placed over $1bn in perfectly timed bets on the Iran war. What is going on? Suspicious wagers on the US-Israel war in Iran are creating huge windfalls and raising concerns among lawmakers

1/3. And this is one more reason the war goes on in some form — people close to Trump are making money from it.
www.theguardian.com/world/2026/a...

A step away from asking the Russians to investigate their own influence operations in the US. The guiding principle of Trump policy is that Russian ops are good because they support him personally. The guiding principle of Russian policy is that Trump is good because he wrecks the US & helps Russia.

Leaving out that crucial fact allows the reader to miss the way this echoes prior authoritarian "investigate the investigator" moves as well as the fundamentally Orwellian character of this. (3/3)

including a Senate investigation, the Mueller report, multiple intelligence investigations, multiple reportorial investigations in the US and elsewhere, and multiple books. (2/3)

U.S. Installs a Trump Loyalist to Lead ‘Grand Conspiracy’ Case Into Trump Foes

Worth adding that Russia did as a matter of fact intervene for Trump in 2016 and that the evidence is widely known, abundant, and collected in various forms (🧵 1/3)
www.nytimes.com/2026/04/18/u...

Sky Defense A New Way to Save Lives in Ukraine

Since Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, it has fired wave after wave of missiles, bombs, and drones at Ukrainian civilians—at their homes, businesses, water supply, & energy infrastructure.
Please join me in raising funds for defense equipment
snyder.substack.com/p/sky-defense

Things I love about Australian airports: no ICE to TSA easy security no shoes off no computers out no TSA no ICE